Chain restaurants and Lido Lounge - who knew?!?

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

This past weekend was half low key and half OMG.Friday was family fun time with CK and his little one, Saturday morning was spin class and laundry before Saturday night debauchery.Today is Lzone's birthday and to help celebrate it Seanski, Nugget, Lzone and I headed out Saturday night not to our traditional weekend haunts in Cleveland's near west side but to locations we don't normally frequent - chain restaurants.Dun. Dun. Duuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnn!Now, for the record, there are nothing wrong with chain restaurants. Hell, I worked at Don Pablo's for two years after college - I just choose to more frequently patron locally owned and operated Cleveland restaurants. It's very important to me.It's also very important to me to have fun and explore new things, such as chain restaurants... ha ha.Our night started out at Olive Garden in Parma for a round of cocktails and drooling over the salad and breadsticks. A trip to Parmatown Mall was next, with an ultimate feast at Red Lobster. Three words, cheddar bay biscuits - life changing. I've never stepped foot into a Red Lobster, nor tried these mysterious biscuits I've heard so much about but now that I have I may become a regular.

Dranks, biscuits and fun.

After dinner we headed to Chili's (one of my favorite chains back in my Canton days) for cocktails and touchscreen trivia before we attempted to head to the Sly Fox and a string of other bars on Lorain. Let's just say the Ozzy cover band (and associated crowd) at the fox wasn't our thing - but the perfect margarita at Applebee's in Fairview Park was.We just were on your average iconic American chain restaurant bar crawl, guys!Well we were until our second to last stop at the Lido Lounge - a "gentleman'sclub" on W117th St in Lakewood that has a reputation amongst our group of friends because EVERYONE knows what/where it is yet NO ONE has really gone. Well, now we have, and it was surprisingly nicer and more fun than we expected.

The chain restaurant thing sounds ridiculously fun because it's so different! As far as the Lido, my friends took me there for my 30th and I was most bothered by the fact that this big bouncer dude wouldn't leave the bathroom/stripper changing area. I couldn't pee with some dude standing right there, so I made everyone leave.

oh my, this post is hilarious! i have the same philosophy on chain restaurants but my brother is a TGI Fridays bartender sooo that gets bent a little bit ;) I was DD for the last chain restaurant bar crawl - you've put the idea in my head for another one!! have a great week!

Awww, there's nothing like your first (& hopefully last) trip to Lido. Mine was two years ago on my 28th birthday, & also came after many drinks & on a whim. Needless to say, it was amazing in a hilarious way and not nearly as bad as I thought it would be ... as dirty as I thought it would be, just not not as bad.

Oh god - the LIDO! I drive past it every day for work, and one night my friends and I did the same thing, we're like, "let's just GO!" It was, well, gross, but definitely not as bad as we expected and we had a really good time. And I've never been to Red Lobster either, but those biscuits sound delish!

DUDE. You HAD to mention Don Pablos!? I used to eat there in college non-stop. And I hadn't thought about that restaurant in ages... so I'm going to call you a jerk. Cause now all I want are their fire beans... SIGH.

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Some would say I'm a 34-year-old marketing professional who has been blogging about her life in Cleveland since '08. I would say I love cooking, drinking bubbles and wearing black. My Mom (and new husband) would say I'm just nuts.